Paddy Pimblett is not having a great start to 2023, despite still being undefeated in the UFC.
The British star opened up about the tough time he’s been having with the fan criticism that’s come his way following his most recent performance in the octagon. Pimblett (20-3 MMA, 4-0 UFC) defeated veteran Jared Gordon by unanimous decision in the co-main event of UFC 282 last December. However, many have been vocal in their belief that Pimblett lost the fight.
That’s why Pimblett sought advice from an all-time great in the sport, Georges St-Pierre.
“Obviously, my last performance wasn’t the greatest, you know what I mean?” Pimblett told St-Pierre in a recent interview on his YouTube channel. “This is the first podcast I’ve done since. My last performance wasn’t the best. I didn’t look half as good as I think I am in that fight, and a lot of people think I lost.
“I’m seeing things online constantly, ‘Oh, he lost. It was a robbery. This and that.’ And I’ve had to just stay away from social media because I can’t get involved in it.
“A lot of people think I lost and to be honest I don’t really know how to handle it and I wanted to ask you because you have more experience than I will ever have.”
St-Pierre, a former UFC middleweight and welterweight champion, has been in a similar situation to the one that Pimblett finds himself in today. The Canadian had advice ready for Pimblett.
“All the great fighters have fights that people say they lost,” St-Pierre said. “When I fought Hendricks some people thought he beat him. Everybody, Jon Jones, even Khabib against Gleison Tibau. Every single guy. Everybody has fights they’re not so proud of. Everybody. Some days you wake up and things just don’t go your way. People forget that fighting is the same thing.
“It’s not always the best fighter that wins the fight. It’s the fighter that fights the best that wins the fight that night. Maybe that night, it was just not your night. … What I did in my case, when I had performances that I wasn’t so proud of, I take a note of the things that I did before the fight and I try to make an assessment of what I should do differently, and I try not to repeat the same mistake. It’s hard to do. Sometimes you just wake up and some days in training I’m just one second too slow, and you don’t really know why.”
Pimblett, who’s dealing with a foot injury and is scheduled to get surgery in March, was grateful for St-Pierre’s advice. He truly believes he’s much better than Gordon, but just wasn’t able to fully show that come fight night.
“I feel like he had the best performance that he had, and I didn’t perform to my full potential,” Pimblettt said. “You’re right, in the future, we could run that one back. I’ve seen he’s already got a fight booked. He’s got a fight booked against Bobby Green, but I don’t think I’ll be able to fight until the back end of the year after this surgery, so we’ll see how it all unfolds.”
